Age 61, from Moscow, Russia

Anna Tevilyevna Shifrina is my mother.  I do not know how to think about her in the past tense, because it just cannot be that she is nowhere anymore.  She is forever.  No matter how far back I remember, perhaps age 4, from the very beginning, she is there.  She is large, merry, gentle, laughing, beautiful, and strong.  She is very strong and very kind.  Mom is laughing, baking a pie, comforting me, writing poems with me, brewing coffee, and again, laughing.  She sews me a carnival costume out of her evening dress and embroiders it with her “adult” malachite necklace.  Once again she is brewing coffee for the neighbors.  It is midnight and she is explaining algebra to me; it is the end of the year and she is beginning with the first paragraph of the textbook.  She cannot hold back; she gets mad, then she just laughs and sends me to bed and with treacherous calligraphy she writes all the answers in my composition book for perfect scores.  She is working, always a lot and very hard.  She finishes late in the evening, picks me up, the last child there, kisses me and asks forgiveness, and does not check my grades…  She feeds me, and three neighbor kids as well, with a single chicken leg, and with something tasty that makes up most of the meal.  Everyone eats at mom’s, even children who as a rule do not eat.

They even eat her porridge, or plain sandwiches, or hot milk with pieces of Borodino bread.  Mom does not try to talk you into it, or blackmail you, she just laughs and eats it with gusto.  She only eats what is left over after the little troglodytes, the neighbor kids and I, are all done.  She watches us kids over her cigarette, watches her dearest niece who came over unexpectedly between classes at the college and a date.  Until I am 14 I really believe that my mother prefers the peel and core of an apple, or a burnt cutlet.

Mom smokes an evening cigarette with the neighbor woman, listens to her latest gloomy family confessions, then hugs her and says: “Anka, all men are bastards, and ours are no exception.”  They both laugh, have some more coffee, and mom deals the cards, and then, as always, says: “All’s fine, Anka!  Don’t worry, girls, the sun will soon be up!”  Her favorite saying and at the same time her way of looking at people and things.

Every weekend we go to grandma and grandpa’s place in Novokuznetsky.  Grandpa is almost 90, and grandma has been bedridden for many years.  They treasure our visits.  Mom opens the door with her key, turns on all the lights, kisses grandpa, hugs grandma, and all at once everything comes to life.  She feeds us something impossibly tasty (possibly just buckwheat porridge in milk), washes the floors, laughs, then washes and combs a suddenly cheerful and blushing grandma.  Deftly, with a joke, she distracts granddad from quizzing me on my school knowledge.  She bakes something, sends me to bring some of this to the neighbors, then lies me down to sleep by reading me something about the New World, but falls asleep first.

Here we are at home, with more guests.  They come from all over: Volgograd, Petersburg, and Tselinograd.  And they are all friends and it is merry.  Mom meets them and embraces them.  She laughs, feeds them, scolds them for bringing presents, and praises someone’s new hair-do.  She works like a factory kitchen.  She gives out endless jokes, coffee, and vodka.  She comes to sleep with me on the couch, but does not stay long – she wants to talk to the guests and feed them.  On the weekend we take them out to theaters and flea markets.  They are in heaven and I am jumping with joy from a feeling of freedom and holiday, yes, and mom, it seems, is completely happy…

So life passes.  Well, almost so.  There are adjustments for my unbearable teen years.  But mom’s sense of humor “switches on”.  During this time I hear a lot: my dates are “not a line of suitors, but a parade of defectives” and “only fools reach for shiny red things”.  Mom, of course, does not plan on meeting my hypothetical first husband!  “What’s the point?” she asks.  “In three days he’ll find the first apple core in bed and run away!”  Most importantly, there is this firm rule: “a girl must spend the night at home!”  She has many well-aimed and precise comments, but it is impossible to get mad so we both laugh and together we make up pithy nicknames for each member of my “parade of defectives”.  By the way, they all tenderly love her.

We only get into serious arguments very infrequently, but when her strength and sense of humor leave her, she threatens: “That’s it, I’m leaving you and going to Ordzho (her favorite vacation spot, a Crimean village by the sea), I’m going to buy a goat and take it into the mountains, and can just stay here and do whatever you want!”  Since this picturesque scenario is repeated periodically, it loses the ability to frighten rather quickly, and only serves to make the listener laugh.  This picture is so painfully absurd and fantastic…

A lot later I see that a lot of what I considered absurd and fantastic, and monstrous and unjust and therefore impossible…

Later… Later it is October 23rd, 2002, and the word ‘Nord-Ost’, a word from which I have not yet ceased to shudder.  Three terrible days of Hell, pierced by only hope for a miracle.  I do not believe and cannot learn what happens later.  I believe that just as she had been planning, Mom has left for the Crimea, bought a goat, and went with it into the mountains at Ordzho.  Now everything in this picture is in harmony, because I am sitting here in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, laughing, and dealing another hand of cards with another friend, and clearly I hear and repeat those words: “Don’t worry, girls, the sun will soon be up!”

Written by her daughter, Tatiana Shifrina.

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